New Zealand women. Models of menopause can be recognised as culturally constructed, and normative definitions of the feminine are viewed as crucial to social perception and individual experience of menopause. This constructivist/interpretive orientation informed the design and methodology of this thesis and guided both the analysis and interpretation of data.
THE BODY POLmC9
Haraway ( 1 99 1 :
7)
identifies the body politic as an ancient concept employed by the Greeks in the form of 'elaborate organic images for human society . . . [ which] conceived the citizen, the city, and the cosmos to be built according to the same principles' . More recent application of the union of the political and the physiological identifies the body politic concept as the struggle between individual and social desire for control over and of the human body. The body politic has, therefore, the ability to regulate, constrain and shape physical appearance and individual experience of the body. It may even distort human anatomy if the physical body is deemed incompatible with dominant values and practices as, for example, in traditions such as circumcision, body piercing and those targeting body shape such as muscularity and slimness.In an earlier study where I examined the experience of breastfeeding for four first time mothers, the impact of the body politic emerged as the central aspect of each mother' s experience (Beasley, 1996). Breastfeeding involves both the physical process of lactation and the social practice of suckling and nurturing of an infant. It is a learned behaviour which is profoundly influenced by social beliefs and practices which have the ability to enhance or inhibit milk production. Understanding the experience of breastfeeding requires, therefore, recognition of the body as the site where physical facts meet social values and conflicting and analogous discourses converge. As a result, a common feature of a mother's breastfeeding experience involves the conversion of her body into a site of conflict and tension generated through the struggle between the physical process of lactation and social requirements of the body politic.
In common with breastfeeding, menopause is an event associated with female reproductive functioning which embraces both the physiological and the social mediated through language and culture. Social constructions of menopause are subject to historical change and shift in accord with the different ways the end of female reproductive functioning is articulated and located within a particular context (Jacobus et al., 1 990: 2) . Fundamental to the social construction of menopause are definitions of what is and is not physically and socially normal. As the mechanism responsible for the latter, the body politic is the central instrument of control of the menopausal body and so shapes and constrains women's expectations, perceptions, experience and practices associated with this event.
BIOMEDICAL HEGEMONY AND MEDICALISATION
Underpinning the body politic' s ability to control the menopausal body are the processes of biomedical hegemony and medicalisation. The concept of hegemony was originally developed by Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, in response to the ability of power exercised by the ruling class over the state to infiltrate and eventually dominate civil society. Accordingly, hegemony can be defined as the internalisation of the beliefs and values of a dominant group to the extent that they become unconsciously accepted as the normal, correct and/or common sense view. The relevance of hegemony to this discussion lies within its ability to constrain individual perception and definition of the body and appropriate corporeal practice. Hegemony manifests itself within the human frame where it is apparent in a variety of tangible, historically locatable, manipulations of body physique and individual action. As a significant force in shaping individual perception and defining the body and appropriate individual practice, hegemony is manifest within the socially correct body and accompanying practice and action. Biomedical hegemony can be defined, therefore, as the internalisation of the medical view of physical functioning, health and illness to the extent that it is unconsciously accepted as the 'natural' and common sense view.
In
the case of menopause, biomedical hegemony is apparent in popular acceptance and articulation of this event asa state of hormonal change and decline.
It is clear that biomedicine, as a hegemonic influence, consciously and unconsciously affects the way we view our bodies, health and disease. Integral to biomedical
hegemony, however, is the notion of 'medicalisation' . Originally defined by lllich
( 1 976)
as a process of control over resources, the term medicalisation has been broadened to accommodate recognition of the cultural nature of biomedicine. 10 In common with all medical systems, biomedicine presents a sense of the world that reflects and buttresses the existing social order, making it necessary to understand the process of medicalisation as one involving both hegemonic influences and control of access to resources.Redefinition of physical functioning, health and illness through medicalisation, transforms many everyday phenomena such as menopause into processes dependent on medical expertise and intervention. As a result, processes previously recognised as falling within a range of 'normal' are redefined as pathological. Knowledge of the body and its functions is transferred from individuals and groups to health professionals who become recognised as the acknowledged experts. Associated with the latter is the devaluation of lay knowledge and skills and the emergence of a specialised vocabulary which (as it becomes incorporated into the vernacular) reconstructs and mystifies popular conceptions of particular events (Van Esterik,
1 989: 1 1 5).
The significance of the process of medicalisation for menopause lies with the ability of medical science to redefine a normal stage in the female life cycle as a disease of hormone deficiency akin to diabetes or thyroid dysfunction and to prescribe treatment with the full force of expert authority that is recognised and accepted.COMMON SENSE, AGENCY AND EXPERIENCE Common Sense
As indicated above, an integral aspect of both hegemony and the process of medicalisation is the internalisation of dominant ideologies to the extent they become unconsciously accepted as the normal, 'natural' and common sense view of reality.
Schutz
( 1 967,
cited in Hall,1 978: 20)
identifies the realm of everyday life as the most'sedimented region of reality and of consciousness' , a realm where the most appropriate mode of consciousness was the most taken-for-granted of all the modes - the domain of common sense. He also notes that because common sense embraces the